Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Recently, Facebook 13th Floor Elevators group member, Tom Vetrano, got with us to answer a few questions about his time in Houston and knowing Stacy Sutherland. BTW, join the 13th Floor Elevators Facebook group.

1) Can you tell us a little about who you are and where you're from?

I was born and raised in Houston and the 60’s was a fantastic time for musical we all know. I loved the early rock groups and got into the Elevators at the Bellaire gym back then and Love Street downtown as well. They used to play at a small community meeting building off of W. Alabama or Richmond Ave near Kirby too, can’t remember the name but can vividly remember the place.

I saw all the greats… Janis, Jimi, Cream, the Allman Bros, Santana the Dead, the Airplane and so on and on as we all did. But it was the Elevators that got me started playing guitar.

Stacy Sutherland

2) You mentioned seeing the 13th Floor Elevators at places like the Jade Room and Love Street. What was that like? How had the band's sound changed from the Jade Room days to playing Love Street?

While attending UT I saw them every Wednesday and Thursday night at the Jade and Club New Orleans... small venues, very personal they always had trouble starting. They always turned Roky's amp way down because he was out of tune or playing too sloppy and Stacy could carry it all so well, he wrote most of it.

Their music was always the same to me no matter where they played. They went nationwide with the Dick Clark Show as you know and hit the SF scene at its peak. Sadly Stacy died Tommy drifted out to the west coast and Roky got put away but their music lived on.

Stacy Sutherland

3) Did you ever see the Stacy Sutherland led version of the 13th Floor Elevators? The one without Roky. If so, what was that like?

BTW, I never saw Stacy's band without Roky and did not record any. I knew Roky's brother Mike very well he was always around and easy going. I had a good friend, Stevie Webb a drummer. He played with them at times. Stevie was a very good drummer, singer and an excellent songwriter. Stevie and I were very close. He knew Roky better than Jerry (Lightfoot) and I wasn’t hanging with Jerry much back then,

3) When and where did you become acquainted with Stacy?

He lived at Bunni's and my friend sister did as well. we would always just get together and smoke a bit and shoot the shit. Living is easy back then. Worrying about rent and food was not really wasn’t that big of a deal. And I guess after the band broke up Stacy's girlfriend was supporting him and he had a little money coming in from international artist I would think. Stacy was quiet and his girlfriend I think was working so which time during the day. He he played an acoustic guitar at times and we would just shoot the shit.

4) Looking back now, do you think that he suffered from undiagnosed depression?

Friday, October 28, 2016

Dear fans of the 13th Floor Elevators - We present the 13th Floor Elevators commemorative poster and HAND-DRAWN PORTRAITS by Ms. Clementine Hall and hand signed by her! That's right, you can get the 'Elevators poster AND the individual prints that make up the Roky, Tommy, Stacy Holy Trinity together as one set.

These are a strictly limited edition and will be artist quality copies produced on archival quality stock and individually signed by Ms. Hall. If you ever wanted to own something to remind you of the mighty 'Elevators NOW is your chance.

The price of any one print will be $49.00 (postage anywhere in the world included) and $74.00 for two with $125.00 for the whole set rounding it off.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

I have announced on the 13th Floor Elevators / Roky Erickson Facebook Group that I am writing my "Memoirs" of the Roky CD Club. I have been doing that and right now, am at about 29, typed, pages. This is going to be a 40+ page tome when I get finished.

When that happens, I will publish it on the blog and load it into the Facebook group's Files as a white paper.

I am telling the whole story here! Everybody is getting named for both the good and the bad.

All of you assholes, Billy Alienate, Paul Douchebag, Sumnerd, Jigger, Mikasshole all o' you! I know that you love threatening to sue people. Make my day! I need more stuff to post on the blog! I need a big laugh! I need more ass-wiping papers!

I am going to publish the whole thing before long but I just wanted to give my readers a "taste". See:

After seventeen years, I have decided to write my, no-holds-barred, account of the humble beginnings and running of the Roky CD Club. Everything is truthful to the best of my recollection.My name is Kiloh Smith, I guess my start in this was when I began collecting and trading bootleg tapes back in the late Seventies.

People used to have typed up "lists" of what they had in their collections. One would type it up and then Xerox copies of it. One would write in additions and corrections until the scribble required typing up a new list or at least "additions" pages.In the classified sections of magazines like Relix, Goldmine, DISCoveries and more were ads from other Tape Traders looking for new partners.

You would contact people out of the backs of these magazines and then arrange to exchange lists. Then you would agree to use a specific type of cassette tape in the trade. I always required the highest quality Maxell, TDK or Sony chromium dioxide tapes. When metal particle, chromium dioxide, hit the market, I required that. Then, you and your partner picked tapes from each others' collections (usually 10) and you would make them up for each other and mail them out.

The late Seventies, all of the Eighties, the early Nineties were a blur of this activity and I had amassed a collection of several thousand tapes. Since the mid-Eighties, I had been diligently collecting Roky Erickson recordings and so had many, many that I enjoyed. I would make copies of them, on lesser quality chrome blanks, and use those to listen to in my car and Walkman; the original tape stayed in my home.

So, I was a tape trading fool. I had also purchased an expensive stereo to listen to everything on with a 500 watt Soundcraftsman amp and top-of-the-line Caver Pre-Amp with build in Sonic Hologram. I also purchased four, West-German, 500 watt continuous output speakers. Today, I still have this backbone of my system and it has never let me down. I recently added a Nakamichi cassette deck to the mix. For CD's I run an inexpensive DVR/CD player and replace it every few years.

In 1991, at graduate school, I was introduced to BBS (Bulletin Board Service) boards on the Internet. This was still when everything was DOS commands on a keyboard. These BBS boards were academic related. BBS was the first "social networking" on the Internet. The backbone of this was USENET which morphed into Google Groups years later.

In 1994, I was shown a Pink Floyd BBS board that my friend was working with. He advertised WPDH-FM, Poughkeepsie, NY on there and scored free Pink Floyd tickets at Yankee Stadium (6th row center) and he took me down with him on the WPDH Party Bus and we rocked out. This was when I first saw the power of the Internet; getting free tickets to Pink Floyd and a ride to the show.

In the Spring of 1998, I was working with a client, in Ithaca, New York and I stumbled upon the new eGroups which was the next generation of online groups from the old BBS boards. E-Groups was the first modern social networking platform and I still think that some of their features are the best. There was a discussion board, a searchable Archive of posts, places to Archive links and files, more...

I started a "Roky Erickson" e-group and began visiting BBS boards and inviting people in. I also went to the comments section of certain websites and left a comment about the group or collected emails to send a message to. Very quickly, within a few days, there were almost one hundred Members including Steve Czapla, Danny Thomas of the 13th Floor Elevators, the late, great Doug Walden of the group Christopher and more.

People began telling their friends about the group and it mushroomed even quicker. See... This was the first such group on the internet and, I got the feeling, that people were grateful for a place to gather and communicate about this subject.

Other people joined the group including "Billy Alienate", from Roky's group - the Aliens, and Roky's former Manager - "Craig Lurkin". There was Keven McAlester who announced that he was working on a documentary about Roky. There was an Englishman named Paul Dickhead who said that he was working on a book. Some guy who called himself The Lama but whose real name was Patrick Lundborg. Everybody got along.

This was the days of burning and trading CDs; there was no bit torrent but people used the lossless technology when making the CDs. I began thinking that it would be nice to convert some of my Roky cassette tapes to CD and share them with the fans. And *that* was the kernel of what became the "Roky CD Club" was all about: sharing.

This was right in the middle of one of Roky's darkest hours (1998). Everybody was taking advantage of Roky who was living on Social Security Disability in a rented room off the highway. There was the two crooks Billy Alienate and Craig Lurkin. Lurkin was Roky's former "Manager" and had the whole Roky Solo Catalog's Rights sewn up into farce contracts.

Billy Alienate was a loser who had played some horrible sounds, off some homemade instrument, during Roky's early solo career. But, basically, he was Lurkin's apologist and professional butt sniffer. Billy hadn't had any success in life since being associated with Roky and therefore glommed on to his brief flirtation with fame years later.

Roky had a Pro Bono Attorney, named Rick Triplett, who was challenging these sham contracts that claimed "ownership" of Roky's songs. As there was a legal dispute over the rights (who gets paid), all of the income generated from the sale of any Roky Erickson solo music was seized and put into an escrow account for dispersal after the dispute was settled. Basically, the monies were seized by the Court and held until the true "Owner" of this material could be determined.

Billy Alienate and Lurkin both had jobs; they could afford to wait until the court determined an outcome. Poor Roky was unable to perform and living on Social Security Disability with a mouth full of rotten teeth. It is my belief that "waiting" was the strategy of Alienate and Lurkin. They would wait until Roky couldn't stand it anymore and then push for a favorable settlement.

Additionally, at this time, there was a flood of sketchy, bootleg quality, Roky solo albums coming out. It was the Wild West for the bootleggers with the two Principals locked in a legal battle and fans hungry for product. Things didn't need to be a "million seller" for these folks. All they had to do was press 1,000 copies of some live recording and sell them through the independent record stores.

Is the reader kinda getting a picture here? It was an absolute mess and there was starting to be coverage about Roky's plight. Additionally, Roky wasn't popular like he is today. One had to really digest a lot of other music before getting to Roky Erickson.

It was "fringe" music and music for record geeks. Now, I know that might not be entirely true but let's just leave it with Roky was much, much, much less well known, back in the Nineties, than he is today. In fact, the Roky CD Club started fanning the flames of awareness for Roky, in a big way, shortly after it was started.

So, I came up with the wonderful idea to take some of my Roky bootlegs and rip them to CD to share with the fans. Immediately, I thought about the implications of this and DID NOT want to be accused of ripping Roky Erickson off. I contacted Rick Triplett and told him about the group and went over my idea for sharing the music. Rick immediately said: "What does Roky get out of this?"

This was the moment when we thought up the idea of a "gift" for the music. It couldn't be called a "payment" or "percentage" or anything like that because it would have been seized and put into that escrow account for future distribution to the "winner" of the legal dispute.

We wanted Roky to have the money NOW and so it was called a "gift". Additionally, as we were exchanging the CDs for free and paying the gift of our own volition, this meant that our activity fell under the "Fair Usage" of Federal Copyright Law.

The idea was to set up "branches" that got the master recording in lossless format from the "tree". These branches would then make copies of the recording for the leaves and collect the gift from them and forward the gift monies to the tree who then sent it onto Rick Triplett.

Rick Triplett would distribute the cash to Roky on an "as needed" basis.Thos who want to read more about this can reference this 2003 Austin Chronicle article about this exact group and activity:

3 songs from a CDR called Spanning Your Theoryelectric demos, just Roky and electric guitar @1975

12. Cold Night For Alligators

13. Starry Eyes

14. White Faces.

This was a huge hit and we raised about $600.00 for Roky utilizing a $2.00 per CD gift. It also attracted the attention of other fans with knowledge and recordings.

The second Roky CD Club Title was this an "alternate mix" of the Psychedelic Sounds LP. We just assembled some outtakes and alternate mixes into the running order of the LP, For good measure, we added in some Houston Demos and other stray tracks. This was an even bigger hit than the first CD and helped raise even more money for Roky that was sent to Rick Triplett.

After that, the Roky CD Club was off to the races and making and distributing CDs, Graphic Artists stepped forward and began producing insert art for the CDs. Everybody was happy! Rick called the money Roky's "cigarette and cheeseburger" money. Mrs. Erickson wrote us letters thanking us for keeping her son's name alive.

Notes:This release reproduces the running order of the original LP using alternate takes. The sound is much better than on the Collectables or Decal releases; the songs were run through sound restoration software with impressive results.

Kingdom of Heaven had to be omitted because there is no alternate or improved mix available. Following that are three songs from the Houston Demos sessions that are available here without the canned audience sounds added on the "Live" album then comes the only known alternate mix from the "Easter Everywhere" sessions, a great version of "Dust," followed by two Roky and Clementine Hall duets that may be from this session also.

Following that are the 7 songs that are known to have been recorded for the never completed "Beauty And The Beast" LP. Three of these songs are familiar versions that appeared on the "Bull Of The Woods" LP, but all 7 are put together to get an idea of what "Beauty And The Beast" would have been like. Tracks 17,18 date from the Spring 1968 Beauty And The Beast sessions. There is a single existing copy of this 10" acetate. It was discovered at the former Gold Star Studios in the mid-1980's and was sold in a Goldmine magazine auction to a private collector in 1985. This acetate was the source of the previously lost/forgotten song I Don't Ever Want To Come Down which was first released on the Elevator Tracks LP in 1987.

Of course, I shared on the group (the original Roky Erickson Yahoogroup) all about our success. This fell under the scrutiny of Billy Alienate and Craig Lurkin. I'd like it known that these two are the ORIGINAL shitbags ripping Roky Erickson off. As the Reader will remember from above, Lurkin had Roky's solo Publishing Rights tied up into sham contracts that were now being challenged by Rick Triplett.

All monies from the sale of Roky's recordings were going into an escrow account.But here we were talking about sharing CDs and producing artwork and paying Roky! Because this was the "gift" idea, and was protected under the "Free Usage" Clause of United States Copyright Law, there was nothing that Billy and Lurkin could do.

Billy and Lurkin have this whole "alternate reality" going where they tell people that they weren't ripping Roky off but were "helping" him. The fact of the matter is that Craig Lurkin was NAMED in the Lawsuit by the (then) Roky Erickson Trust for signing Roky to sham contracts (stealing rights) and refusing to honor the Royalty payment clause of all of those contracts.

Basically, Lurkin wasn't paying Roky a dime; not even royalties on sales of product. That's the truth of it. Billy? Billy was just hanging on for the ride and had no stake in anything. It was the past afterglow of his moment in the sun and he was milking it for all that he could.

Rick and I came up with the idea to claim on the group that the Roky CD Club was taking in "thousands" every issue. This was meant to be information to "bug" Billy and Lurkin because Rick really couldn't stand those two. So I began putting this disinformation out on the group about the "thousands" being taken in by the Roky CD Club.

Apparently, now Roky was no longer living on just social security disability but actually had an income coming in from CDs. So it was hundreds instead of "thousands" but Rick told me that the Roky CD Club was the first time, in his life, that Roky Erickson was being paid for his recorded music!

Anyway, Billy began emailing me about "Craig" "owning" the recordings that we were distributing for free. Additionally, "Craig" "Owned" the songs on them too. See… Lurkin didn't talk to anybody; he spoke "through" Billy Alienate. And Billy reveled in his importance! It was like: "Craig wants *this*", "Craig likes *that*", Craig would like to see the *other thing* done differently".

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

A Theory of Eternal Life

By George Kinney

The following presentation is a brief consideration of a
series of key ideas regarding possible relationships that exist between
densities of matter, time, and quality of life. Further, I will attempt to shed
some light on how these ideas may correspond to some of the most essential
elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine, specifically the concept of Qi.
Without attempting to define Qi, an attempt will be made to show possible
similarities between the actions or properties of Qi, inseparable from the
concept of Yin and Yang, and the properties of various states or densities of
matter and energy.

Comprehensively, these key ideas allude to one or more ways
of attempting to understand our existences, collectively and individually, in a
vast and mysterious universe that possesses qualities, aspects, and
dimensionalities that are essentially beyond our ability to define or fully
understand…that is, these ideas are metaphors or symbols to aide us in the
search for the miraculous, a search which by all indications so far, can by
nature never be completed.

POINT

Let us first examine the fundamental nature of our
understanding of time, and let us use geometric symbols to do so. Primarily,
time, according to our psychological apparatus, is essentially sensed as an
“instant” or moment, isolated in perception and connected with past and future
moments psychologically thru the application of the associative cortex of our
brain. Geometrically, this may be corresponded with a point.

LINE

The extension of this span of time, a moment, linearly gives
us the psychological experience, presumably, of a series of events. This
expressed geometrically can be visualized as the extension of a point into a
line. The same relationship that exists, therefore, between a point and a line,
exists also between a moment and a linear series of events. This extension is
generally considered to be infinite in the sense that there are conceivably an
infinite number of points in a line and an infinite number of potential events
in a series. We may further assign a dimensionality value on them and that
value would be one. That is, we have begun with one dimensionality, both in
geometrical space and time.

Another way of looking at it is that a point, infinitely
extended one dimensionally, produces a line. By the same token, a moment
extended infinitely produces a series, or infinite succession of events in
linear time.

-PLANE OR SURFACE

Our one-dimensional friend, the line, if extended either
vertically or horizontally, becomes a plane, or we may say that the “trace” of
a point becomes a potentially infinite line and the trace of a potentially
infinite number of lines forms a plane or surface.

SOLID

A plane or surface, similarly traced in a any direction
perpendicular to it, forms what we refer to in Euclidian geometry as a solid.
Thus we may follow these natural progressions of dimensionality to result in
the following relationships:

Point> line> surface> solid… forming the
continuum of 3 dimensional space that we have all come recognize as our normal
sphere of observable existence.

According to the same model, we may experience seconds
becoming minutes, becoming hours, becoming days, becoming weeks, months, years,
decades, centuries, etc.

These are the logical extensions of aspects of our
psychology into graduating levels of dimensionality. *1

In addition, these relationships can be shown to correspond
to our experiences in terms of sensations, perceptions, concepts, up to and
most likely beyond abstractions and idealisms.

The point of all this is to demonstrate that our sense of
time and space, as well as our method of arranging them into understandable
forms, systems, and patterns, depend on assigning them graduating degrees of
dimensionality in order to grasp them with our understanding, or even to
experience them without comprehensive understanding. That is, all the human
qualities and potentials for experience are RELATIVE. This is directly
associated with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

EVERYTHING EXISTS AND IS MEASURED EXCLUSIVELY IN TERMS OF
ITS RELATION TO SOMETHING ELSE.

A grossly oversimplified bumper-sticker understanding of
E=MC2 is that something perceived in a particular state or form is observed as
such due to the nature of the observer’s ability to observe and the particular
conditions, internal external, under which the observation occurs. That is,
energy and matter are either /or dependent, literally, on how one looks
at it. This makes the existence of anything relative to the existence of
something else and only such interdependence and interrelationship allows or
defines such existence. This indicates that existence consists more of patterns
and relationships than of tangible particles of 3-dimensional matter, shrinking
in size logarithmically until they mysteriously disappear into theoretical
beings, such as the infamous ‘strings’, and slip away from our direct
observation altogether.

You may also remember that in TCM fundamentals, we learned
that Yin and Yang, the powerful creative forces of life, are interrelated and
interdependent, that is, they exist only in RELATIVITY to each other. However,
it is important to note here in light of modern advances in quantum physics,
specifically in the observation of the characteristics of light and the
behavior of energy in the ‘string theory’, that it seems reasonable at this
point to speculate that the more comprehensive our awareness, that is, the more
dimensions our awareness is able to embrace and process intelligently, the more
comprehensive will be our experience of our environment. In fact it can also be
justifiably speculated that the very nature of our environment and our ability
to manipulate it constructively, which is a key element in the practice of TCM,
rests in expanding this ability through increased awareness of the energies
involved.

OUR CONCEPTS HUMAN OF LIFESPAN ARE DETERMINED BY THE
LIMITS OF OUR AWARENESS

While a comprehensive understanding of this concept may be
well beyond the scope of this presentation, it is not overly difficult to
consider that the same limits we naturally place on matter due to the
limitations of our natural sensory apparatus as it relates to our psychology
and our understanding, we may also be imposing upon our concepts of our own potential
lifespan. That is, our understanding of both our environment and our existence
in it, as it pertains to time or duration, is deducted or induced by our method
of observation, which may not include all of the potentialities existent within
the phenomena themselves, apart from our ability to understand them. Here we
return to the idea of the relationship that exists between the limits of our
awareness and the definition of what constitutes our existence, both as matter
and/or energy. Thus, varying densities of matter, or various states of matter,
involve different laws of physics and time.

The implications of this concept in regard to conscious,
practical manipulation of this awareness or energy and its application to
healing disease and establishing and maintaining a beneficial equilibrium, or
health, may be an important precursor to a vast new approach to health care and
quality of life in general.

LIVING TIME

The idea of immortality can either be synonymous with the
idea of eternal life or not, depending on how you want to look at it. One
common connotation of immortality implies the absence of death. If taken as
such, we would not consider eternal life and immorality to be synonymous terms
at this time, although they are closely related. Only if we expand our
understanding of death can we make these two concepts synonymous.

So right off the bat we have to say that if by death we mean
the death and decomposition of the human body, and that the absence of that
process is immortality, then the concepts I am discussing here do not imply
immortality. If, on other hand, we agree to consider death as a process that is
intimately integrated with the process of life, and cannot be separated from
life, then we could consider eternal life and immortality to be one and the
same phenomena. So let’s say, for now, that we can have it both ways…that we
can experience death, that is, the decomposition of the cellular material that
makes our bodies, and yet that life, for us, can go on, relatively, forever. It
is in this context that I offer the following information for consideration.

THE INTEGRATION OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY

Let me emphasize that what I am proposing as a possibility
here has almost nothing whatsoever to do with any particular religion, cult,
social group, or dogmatic system of worship of any kind. It is interesting to
note, however, that most all organized religions and “spiritual belief systems”
stem from the fundamental concepts (and the investigations thereof) that
roughly form the general category of thinking sometimes correctly referred to
as esoteric knowledge. Even this distinction is fading, however, as what has
formerly been considered esoteric knowledge begins to merge with the most
advanced ongoing scientific discoveries.

Let us consider some of the similarities that can be found
that interrelate behavior, awareness, and duration of existence. **2

Matter in our neck of the physio/psychological woods
may for our purposes here be broken down into various states of density that have
corresponding relationships to duration, i.e., time.

They are, in order of density and duration, the mineral
state, the cellular state, the molecular state and the electronic state.

We know that the present doesn’t really exist because by the
time we consider it, it is already past. So if the present doesn’t really
exist, and the past doesn’t exist any more and the future doesn’t exist yet,
then everything doesn’t ever exist, and also, nothing always exists. This
paradox can only be solved by evolving ones’ concept of time and by lifting the
restrictions we impose on the consistency of matter according to our sensory
apparatus. This process can be referred to as the conscious expansion of
consciousness, or psychological evolution.

Here are some examples of comprehensive systems that
express evolution through the increase of their dimensionality:

Dance:a.)A
concept of possible motions including all types of dance, known and unknown.
These motions exist in abstraction and only as potentials, but include all
possible dances and the steps therein.

b)The specification of particular dances that share some common
aspects with all “dance” and have unique characteristics which define it as a
particular dance

c)The various steps that formally identify the particular dance
from other particular dances

d)The variations of those identifying steps according to the
individual interpretation and expression of the individual dancer

Literature:a) All books and all written ideas or
experiences, including all linguistic applications such as letters, words,
sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc., which make up the essential elements of
literary expression

c)The various literary techniques specific to a particular
author, which utilize the general characteristics of the genre to identity his
work from others

d)The individual and unique interpretation of these techniques
in a specific work by a reader

The point here is that the trace of a dance movement in
linear time forms a segment of a dance or an entire dance, dependent upon the
duration of that extension. The finite repetition of that sequence may
represent the lifetime of the dance, or the dancer, and the existence of the
dance throughout linear time may represent eternity for the dance. That is,
eternity for the dance is repetition of the steps in an infinite field of
recurrence, which is not limited by the individual dancers participation by any
physical application.

Art, Science, and even Religion may be seen to follow this
pattern, as well. Religion is perhaps the most ephemeral of the pack in that
its precepts and key ideas are not as easily categorized, yet contain definite
and obvious concepts involving the transformation of various degrees of matter,
an expanded concept of time, and an interactive paradigm of cause and effect
which is largely dependent upon an individual’s psychology, expressed through
behavior and the concept of choice. Beginning to sound a lot like quantum
physics, isn’t it?

States or Densities of ‘Matter

Mineral states of matter.

These are the densest, and therefore the slowest instances
of existence as we consider it. Relative to the next finer state, cellular
life, it is 800 times slower. That is everything is experienced (if we can even
use the word experienced in that reference) 800 times slower that it is in
cellular life. In this context we will consider cellular life as it pertains to
humans, as an 80-year span. The accompanying charts illustrate some of the
variations in the velocity of matter at different densities and the relative
‘work’ done in various time spans relative to these variations.

Cellular states of matter (human body)

This is the next finer state of matter, cellular
organization, specifically the human body, but also including the biological
world of nature. We may consider it to last 80 years, more of less.

Molecular states of matter

Next up we have molecular life, represented theoretically as
the nature of the existence of the human soul. Also, we may consider scents to
be a part of this world. The sense of smell is akin to molecular states of
matter, in that it can permeate and travel through cellular matter. So the soul
can permeate and travel through cellular and to some degree, mineral matter. In
this world everything happens roughly a 1000 times faster than in the cellular
world.

Electronic states of matter

Last and certainly not least we come to the fastest of the
lot, electronic matter or solar matter or the most essential expression of
energy as it relates to matter, light, and how it specifically relates to a
human life. Everything happens in just 40 minutes that happens in one month in
the molecular world and 80 years in the cellular world and 800,000 years in the
mineral world. In other words, life in the fast lane, the sub-atomic world of
light, is about a million times faster than in a human cellular body.

EXHIBIT A

EXHIBIT B

As we can see in the charts, these time spans represent
various simultaneous expressions of human existence or, put in another way,
these periods mark the time which the original impulse of an individual life,
the quantum of energy assigned by higher laws to each human atom, take to
overcome the varying resistances set up by the three media—just as a bullet
shot from a rifle must pass through wood at one speed, through water at
another, and through air a third. *4

Living Time and the Integration of Life

So what? Why does any of this really matter to anyone but
speculative mathematicians, quantum mechanics (even shade tree ones) and
theoretical philosophers?

Here’s why.

The beautiful paintings which follow describe the various
world views of major spiritual systems covering a vast time spans and vast
geographic areas.

Interesting to note is that they all involve behavior,
choice, various states of matter, and duration of life force. They also include
states of being superior by degree of dimensionality, which operate in realms
of energy that are subject to fewer physical laws as density decreases. These
higher states allude to conscious judgment of some degree and that choice and
behavior are extremely important factors in determining further states of
being.

It is crucially relevant to notice the connection in all of
these world views, the relationships of consciousness, behavior, choice,
varying states of matter, and the allusion to an omnipotence that is both
subjective and objective, intimately connected with what we may consider an
invisible aspect or aspects of our being. All include states of being between
death and birth that accommodate some form of conscious experience. All
incorporate some form of existence after the decomposition of the physical or
cellular body. All include some relationship between behavior and the potential
outcome of some sort of ‘judgment’ that occurs after death and before birth.

EAST MEETS WEST

Understanding one’s life in time in light of the vastness
that the above concepts suggests, life itself may become much more meaningful,
and the idea of individual responsibility becomes inseparable from quality and
duration of life. This is essential to the integration of fundamental TCM
concepts into western medical modalities and research. To accept and seriously
investigate the elemental properties of Qi and Yin and Yang together with the
investigation of western advances in quantum physics is to initiate the
ultimate merger between the ideas of the East and the West.

NEW AGE HEALTH POTENTIALS: FANTASY OR

EXPANDABLE REALITY?

Whatever else one might gain from this investigation,
regardless of spiritual beliefs, the idea of being able to extend our abilities
to manipulate cellular activity through the manipulation of molecular activity
and ultimately through the knowledgeable manipulation of electronic or
subatomic energy is an exciting and relatively limitless quest. It could even
imply the refinement of health care to levels never before possible, even to
the extreme of developing a capacity to treat a disease in the timeless,
subatomic realm in order to literally prevent it from ever occurring in the
first place.Imagine a doctor who could
manipulate energies that existed in a patient that has contracted a
life-threatening disease in a realm independent of time. This would be
preventative medicine in the most advanced context.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

However you look at it, this life is most likely very
important, and how you consider it, that is, the degree to which you are aware
or present for you own life is a major factor in determining the overall
quality of it. It affects others, too.

For instance, what if you believed that everything existed
always and forever? Every thing you did or said would then be in some way more
or less permanent.

You wouldn’t waste so much time on insignificancies; things
would matter more to you. And this level of awareness of your life would affect
everyone around you, in direct proportion to your level of interaction with him
or her.

It would be less attractive to you to be unpleasant or
inconsiderate of others and of yourself. Personal self-esteem would gain ground
in your overall evaluation system or worldview.

This is not to be confused with moralization.. It is
relevant only insofar as it applies to actual conscious experience and the
potential for the improvement thereof, a process that I fondly refer to as psychological
evolution.

But even if you don’t think of life as something that
extends for an individual consciousness beyond death and decorporealization,
all this is still relevant, if only because it affects the 80 years you might
have in which to live and breath and have your being. And anyway, to master the
skills in self remembering and persistence in consciousness that might allow
you to exist eternally as an individual being, but not confined to the limits
and laws of cellular existence would take a whole lot more energy and intent
than the vast majority of us are able to muster.

So don’t worry too much if you don’t think this will happen
to you. You still might be eligible for some kind of rebirth or reincarnation,
as another you just like the old one, constantly recurring on and endless
circle of existences without memory of the succeeding life. Or perhaps you
might progress with little increments of positive change (visualized by the
upward spiral a slinky toy makes when stretched upwards) that might someday
qualify you for electronic existence or the life of pure spirit or energy. But
in any case, I highly recommend that you do everything in your power to avoid
the ultimate degradation, that is, consignment to the world of mineral
existence. Remember, that one lasts 800.000 years without significant change or
modification. For most of us, that would be Hell.

SO
THEN:

In summation, the quality of one’s life depends upon one’s
fundamental understanding of time. Everything you do, say, feel, or think, is
related to how you view time in general, and specifically how much time you may
or may not have. Many if not most of us have experienced the death of someone
close to us. At these times, our own sense of mortality is enhanced, for better
or worse. Somehow we seem to understand something that passes us right by in
our normal daily lives. It has to do with being present for our lives instead
of absent from them. It has to do with living our lives under the stark,
tangible realization that our bodies will, indeed, succumb to decomposition and
yet perhaps becoming able to embrace the thrilling, invigorating sense of
timelessness that may exist for more durable components of our being.

NOTES:**2: The ideas of evolution and
intelligent design are anything but mutually exclusive. One only had to
consider the evolution of a novel to see this. What are the chances that War
and Peace wrote itself, randomly, with no intelligent design? Tolstoy had
letters and words already available, a totally random field of potential
combinations of them, and he organized them into patterns that communicated his
essential artistic ability, emotional desire and intellectual intent. Now the
letters and words were also invented by intelligent design by humans who came
before Tolstoy. The origins of the written word are clearly evolutionary yet
include obvious intelligent design. In fact, nearly everything you can think of
follows this pattern. Why then, is it so difficult to consider the possibility
of mutual participation between intelligent design and evolution? I think
discounting the possibility of such a combination of complementary forces is
not only unwise, but also unfruitful.

*** 3: The big bang theory, Stephen Hawking and the
others notwithstanding, is not necessarily all-inclusive, even though relative
to what we have to observe it the best explanation we have within the confines
of an understanding of time limited to linear conceptualization.

The thus-far unanswerable question is: What existed before
the big bang? Nothing? Well, nothing is something. In fact, nothing and
everything are equal according to Zen philosophy. The idea that everything
either does or doesn’t have to have a start and a finish is based on a linear
concept of time, that is, the progression of past to present to future.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

In this post we are going to discuss acid, or psychedelics, and why people took/take them, and if they are bad for you. First, I am going to outline the world’s first Western Psychedelic Scene. It was in Austin, Texas at the beginning of the Sixties. If you have an earlier one, comprised of more than a few people, lay it on us but I am going with Austin as my example.

The years I am citing are 1962 – 1965. Prior to that, Austin had a Beat Movement that dabbled in peyote and weed but it was hardly more than a few people. The catalyst for the beginning of the Austin Psychedelic Scene was the CIA’s MK-ULTRA Project. See... the CIA was very, very, very interested in psychedelics in the early Sixties. They thought of them as some sort of possible “truth serum” or “brainwashing” substance or even as a possible chemical warfare catalytic to stop troop movement. Like… they would fly over the enemy troops and spray them with LSD mist. You get the picture.

They had experimented on their own troops throughout the Forties and Fifties and, at the start of the Sixties; they were fascinated with experimenting with psychedelics on the general public. Some bright individual came up with the idea to pose as a drug company researching compounds and to set up shop on college campuses and pay the kids minimum wage to be dosed with psilocybin, LSD, DMT and other compounds.

I’m going to kind of stop here because a LOT can be written about this project. I want to stick with Austin. But anyway, the University of Texas at Austin was a place chosen to set up shop; another place was the Berkeley Campus in California. Another place was (I believe) Columbia University in NYC.

Anyway, around 1961, the CIA placed ads in the the University of Texas at Austin School paper for recruits to participate in a drug testing experiment. People like Tommy Hall, Gilbert Shelton, Powell St. John and others who went onto do psychedelic things afterwards signed up for minimum wage. I know that Tommy thought the whole thing was bullshit and that using these drugs would be MUCH BETTER out in the general public than in some sterile lab with some asshole in a white coat seeing how fast you can add up a column of numbers while the sheet of paper drips away into infinity. Then the guys in the white lab coats would leave and Tommy would take a napkin and dump some of the liquid out onto it to take home and turn his friends on with.

So anyway, the drugs escaped from the lab. From 1962 – 1965 a very vibrant Psychedelic Scene developed in Austin with people dropping acid, doing mushrooms and taking peyote. All this stuff was 100% DEAD LEGAL at this time. Tommy was part of this, Powell St. John was, Gilbert Shelton was, Janis Joplin was and a lot more. They even had a place where they all lived called The Ghetto. Everybody would go to Threadgill’s to play and hear music.

These early psychedelic folk developed a theory about the nature of reality from reading books by Philosopher’s like Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, trying Eastern religions and processes and taking lots of psychedelic drugs. This theory about the nature of reality went like so: There are perhaps thousands of “realities” in the Universe. Man has assembled this reality due to his sensory limitations. Man can only perceive what his five senses allow him to. The reality of an ant, or a trout, is much different than man’s reality. The idea was that these drugs were a tool to unhinge the barriers from man being FREE to see the world in an entirely new light.

What really kicked this scene into high gear were the Beatles and Dylan. And when Dylan went electric Tommy Hall had a vision that “serious” Dylan lyrics, coupled with a driving Beatles-type music, was the way of the future. What he envisioned was Modern Rock Music and he was exactly correct. Only he had been taking LSD for three years and his idea of “serious” lyrics had to do with the revolution going on in his thought processes. All of this begat the world’s first psychedelic rock group – the 13th Floor Elevators.

Now, about psychedelics, what does one of the originators of this scene think? George Kinney, of the Golden Dawn, once told me his view of psychedelics. The Golden Dawn were, perhaps, the world’s second psychedelic rock group and their LP would have been IA-LP #2 after the ‘Elevators. Instead, IA fucked them and held back the album so the Red Crayola could release their album and the ‘Elevators could release their second album.

Annnnnyway, George once told me that people’s perception of reality was like a hard, rubber, ball. And, for the vast majority of us, this “perception” of reality is all that’s holding us together. Anyway, our perception of reality (or our collective rubber ball) can really take a licking. You can bounce it against a concrete wall 10,000 times and it just gets a little scuffed up. It’s lost some shine but is still round and shapely. This is people’s moving through life. We can even hit it with a sledge hammer or drop an anvil on it and it, pretty much, bounces right back with scar or scuff. This is some life-changing event like a bad accident or a wartime experience.

Taking psychedelic drugs really challenges our perception of reality. This perception of reality remains pretty much unchanged after some light doses or medium doses. But what if you take that rubber ball and squish it into a two-ton press? It might bounce back OK after a few times. But what if we squish that same ball in that two-tone press fifty times? What if we squish it in a TWENTY-TON press twice? The ball might come out looking kind of messed up and out of shape. Keep it up and it becomes a shapeless piece of rubber.

Even though psychedelics don’t cause organic brain damage this was George’s theory of what an “acid causality” was.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Texas psychedelic pioneers such as the 13th Floor Elevators, Red Crayola and Doug Sahm returned to the Lone Star State, from touring California, reporting huge concerts and production companies run by freaks. Up until then, the psychedelic scene in Texas was experienced in bars and teen clubs.

Taking this information, psychedelic entrepreneurs, Gary Maxwell, Houston White and Henry Carr, along with 13th Floor Elevators' Booking Manager/Soundman - Sandy Lockett, began booking shows around Austin under the name Electric Grandmother. They would get bands, rent a hall, print posters and hope to turn a profit.

Their first show was a 1/7/67 show by the 13th Floor Elevators at Doris Miller Auditorium in Austin. This auditorium held over 2,000 people. Then there was a Conqueroo show, at the Methodist Student Center at the beginning of February. Flushed with that success, the Electric Grandmother promoted another 13th Floor Elevators show at the much larger Austin City Coliseum on 2/10/67.

After three good shows, the idea of the Electric Grandmother was seen as taking off. Rather than have a set place to promote shows, the people at the Electric Grandmother thought that they could be a mobile unit and travel around Texas, and then the USA, renting halls and putting on shows. Their partners in crime for this idea were the 13th Floor Elevators and the Conqueroo. Their first show, outside of Austin, was at the Houston Music Theater on 2/18/67.

Of course, International Artists was involved in this because they were booking/managing their Star Band - the 13th Floor Elevators. IA thought: "This would be a great opportunity to record a live album". The "magic" of the 13th Floor Elevators was really in their live shows and IA wanted to capitalize on it. The label had just purchased a, state-of-the-art, 8-track recording machine and it was arranged to transport this behemoth to the venue to record the gig.

The Houston Music Theater in Sharpstown seated almost 3,000 souls and sported a revolving stage. The theater is still in use today and people say there's not a bad seat in the house. This should have been the perfect opportunity for the Electric Grandmother, IA and the 13th Floor Elevators but, alas, the stars were not aligned right that night.

The day of the show the band spent time visiting record stores in Houston and signing autographs. Before the show, according one eyewitness, Tommy had some special, Sandoz, LSD and dosed the band. Stacy, obviously, took a massive overdose as related in his account from a 1974 interview with Joseph Kahn:

"... One time I was in a motel room; we were getting ready to play a show at the Musical Hall in Houston, and it was the biggest show we'd ever done in Texas, and we took some Sandoz acid. And all of a sudden, I lost control of my body and I got down on the floor and I'd never experienced anything like this before, and I looked up and Tommy and Roky were turning into wolves, hair and teeth, I mean wolves... man! And in my mind I was hearing the echo of space, and rays of light were shooting through the roof. And I kept remembering the scripture in the Bible, 'Beware the false prophets,' and all of a sudden here was a vision in light that we were wolves and we were spreading drugs and Satanism in the world, and I'd never realized it, because of an Antichrist influence."

"And all of a sudden I was bad, and these angels walked in the room and they had light shining on them, bright, and they all gathered 'round me and they were the jury at my trial. And this one angel stepped up, and he was offering me a job, and it was really just our lawyer [Jack McClellan], and Roky and Tommy and one of Roky's friends named Jack Scarborough. And I knew who they were as people, and I knew they were in a model level... you know, conception, and I was talking to God, and they were spirits in a position of influence on me and a decision that had to be made in my life. And I couldn't make it, know what I mean?"

"And we went to the show and all of a sudden Roky put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Man, you've been here before.' I knew what he meant, but I thought he meant, 'YOU HAVE been here BEFORE.' [Laughs.] He said, 'Man, I'm sorry you've just here because of me,' meaning 'I put you in a bad place'... possibly. I thought he meant my whole existence and purpose was to be a guitar player for his voice, I felt like I was going to turn around and a bolt of lightning come through the car and explode... and the spaceship would come."

"We got to the Musical Hall, and I went inside and the devil was there, and he had his tall pointed hat on, and he was the emcee for the show, and he was 'Weird Beard,' the number one disc jockey in Houston, and he looked at me and he had a goatee and a sorcerer's costume on... and I was bad and he knew it. And nobody else in the room could see, and this narcotics agent that we hired to travel with us had to guard us, because they were always trying to put pot on us, was standing beside me and I didn't want him to know I was freaking out."

"And the devil walked up to me and started asking me how his pointed hat looked, and every time he twisted his pointed hat his nostrils would flare... I ran outside and looked up at the sky and there were clouds of blood floating in the sky... and I call John Ike and Ronnie up and said I've got to go to the hospital, 'cos I lost it. And they kept saying, 'No, man, you don't want to do that, because if you go to a hospital the psychiatrist is going to see you flipped out on acid and they're going to start hassling. You might as well work it out yourself.' So, I said, 'Okay, I'm just going to try and go with it' and we went inside and the show was starting man, and it was the biggest show we'd ever done! [Laughs.]"

"And as soon as I took off down the ramp, man, I looked down and there I saw the light show and the revolving stage and it represented Hades, and Satan with his cape was leading us down into the arena. And all these kids were around, and I thought, we're going down there to tell people to get stoned and if the world ends right now I've had it.""And I said, 'Man, I have to get to a preacher...' I was gone, I really thought it was the end, you know. I couldn't talk to either [Tommy] or Roky that night, see, because they were the wolves... I was a wolf too. I got on this rib and I ran for the door and one of these wolves jumped in front of the door. And I thought they were going to stake me on the floor, because I was a wolf too, see?"

"I said, 'Man, we're mad.' But anyway, that angel, he told me I was going to the penitentiary and that I was going to lose this chick [Laurie Jones] I had been going with for eight years... And we are planning on getting married. And when I came down about two or three days later I just blew it off, just said, 'Man, too weird!' and I never thought about it... and a few months after that I lost that chick, and a year and some and I was in the penitentiary. That really happened, I swear."

Another interview states: Stacy took a hit of pure Sandoz acid shortly before the Elevators were set to take the stage and almost immediately began to have a major episode. Jack McClellan, the band's lawyer, had traveled with them to the show and attempted to calm him down by having a massive office duty cop give him some cannabis. McClellan described this spectacle as thus:"This friend of mine was saying, 'What's wrong with Stacy? You gotta take the sharp end of the acid off with some grass.' Stacy was lying on the goddamn floor, groaning. This guy [an off-duty cop] was about seven feet tall and three hundred pounds, and straight-looking, and he freaked Stacy out. He just looked like a big cop, standing there in that hotel room. Finally, this dude gave him a couple of joints and cooled him right out, but we practically had to carry him on stage. The kids loved it. No wonder the narcs considered it their sacred duty to eradicate these cats..."

John Ike Walton later recalled, "Just before we went on, Stacy comes up to me and says, 'John, I'm scared. I feel like a two-year-old child. I went and turned this over to Jack McClellan, my lawyer. I said, 'Jack, Stacy feels like a two-year-old child. He's dropped a bunch of acid and he's gotta go on in 30 minutes. So Jack takes him outside and sticks a joint in his mouth. He gets him even higher than he already was! [Laughs.] Needless to say, it didn't work."

Stacy also recalled, "I had taken some acid and I hadn't had any in quite a while, and it was a super strong dose, about a 1,000 micrograms or something. I had some bad trips before, but nothing like this. And then everybody turned into wolves, and I thought that our band was evil, because of some of the things we had advocated. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I was gonna get out of there."In an unpublished 2-hour interview with Stacy in Houston in the Spring 1977. Stacy also recounts the revolving stage incident. The tapes from the interview have been preserved, but the names of the two persons conducting it are unknown. This was first put out to the fans by the Roky CD Club. Apart from Stacy, his girlfriend Bunny and former Elevators drummer Danny Thomas were present. Following the interview Stacy performs a few traditional songs with acoustic guitar. Listen to an excerpt from that interview HERE:

Here is a published excerpt from that interview:Q: "What were some of the most mystic visions you had on acid?"STACY: "Hmm... well, it's hard to say exactly, I just remember when I started taking acid... I guess the strongest visions I ever had were kinda bad actually, but they could have been because of my background and how I was raised.""The most mystic vision I ever had was concerning a show we did here in Houston, Theatre In The Round [a k a Houston Music Theatre]. And I had taken some acid, I hadn't had any in quite a while, and it was a super strong dose, about a 1,000 microgram or something. And we had to do a concert, and all of a sudden everyone started glowing. They had a foot of light, like a neon light around them in the room… real bright. And everyone started glowing away, and I freaked out that I was going to die or something."

"I had some bad trips before, but nothing like this. And then everybody turned into wolves, and I thought that our band was evil, because of some of the things we had advocated. We had had a controversy going on quite a while about advocating drugs and so forth, and mixing it with religion, you know. 'Cause I felt like that was pretty dangerous ground to tread. And Tommy and I were arguing about that quite a bit."

"I got on a bummer about it evidently. And I was tryin' to escape the room, I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I was gonna get out of there. I didn't want anything to do with it 'cause everybody was turning into animals. And all of a sudden there were angels, and I couldn't move my body anymore. I lost physical feeling all over and I was laying on the floor. And everybody turned into angels, and everybody in the room was the judge at my trial to decide whether I was worthy to enter heaven or hell. Because it was absolute that I was going to die anyway you know. And there was one good angel, and I felt like I'd been there before, many times, not just once. But, I'd been in this circumstance with these same people, and the whole time that I was there I was..."Q: "You'd been playing in the band?"STACY: "Yeah, but I'm talkin' with these cosmic spirits you know, as judges. I knew who they were as people, as models, but I knew that they didn't realize what role they played in my existence on this earth. And this one angel told me that two or three different events were going to take place in my life. And every one of them came true within two years."Q: "Major events?"

STACY: "Yeah, they were major. One of them was the end of an eight year relationship with a girl I'd been going with. One of them was when I was going to the penitentiary, and I went to the penitentiary. And the third one hasn't come true yet, and I hope it doesn't [laughter]. It was really a mystical experience, at the time I knew without a doubt that it was true, there was no denying it. I tried to convince myself when I came down a week later, it took me about a week to get off that trip, that it was all just a bad experience on acid and I didn't pay any more attention to it. Until these events would take place and then I would remember it because it's always with me. Always will remember that experience."

"And I had three or four like that concerning the group getting together. They were on a lighter scale about the fact that the timing and everything, it seemed like it was meant to be. And then we had some musical experiences that are hard to explain with words, about timing when we were playing that was just like, there's no way I can explain it, it's just something really magic in the group when we played that I could feel, it was like a power that I've never experienced before or since. It was some kind of musical communication that was just extraordinary, as far as anything that I've ever experienced..."Q: "Do you feel like acid helped you reach God?"

STACY: "Hmm... well I think acid helped enlighten me quite a bit. Made me more aware at the time. I don't know if you can actually say it, "see God", you know…. but yeah I think acid really started me thinking about it, for sure. In less defined terms, before that all the religion that I've had was through the church and the way I was raised. The ideas that acid gave me were much more expanded. The words took on new connotations."

Later, Stacy used his wolf-morphing experience for some of the lyrics for the 'Elevators Swan Song LP: Bull of the Woods. As far as ill-omened angel that was on stage with him that evening, an image that continued to haunt the guitarist for the rest of his life. Stacy recounted many times that the angel revealed to him that three things would happen in his life. He said that two of them have already come true and he hoped the third wouldn't. The first two were the loss of the love of his life; Nobody to Love - Laurie and going to prison. It is speculated that the angel revealed to Stacy that he would die an early death but Stacy took that information to his grave.

Former Senior Vice President of Media Relations at Warner Bros. Records, Bill Bentley, was there and recalled, "Little did we know the theatre was in-the-round and the stage actually turned while the bands were playing," he told me. "But who cared? It was the Elevators in all their glory. Not to mention Austin's Conqueroo, who were almost as far-out. As the evening progressed it was pretty obvious as least half the crowd was on LSD, so whatever happened was totally mesmerizing. By the end of the night when both bands were jamming together, it seemed like our own Be-In, and the theatre felt like a spaceship hovering somewhere out in the cosmos. Confusion never felt so fine."Conqueroo Member, Henry Wallace III, remembers the gig thus, "Man, my memory of that gig is different. I was the tambourine, Farfisa organ, and bass player for the Conqueroo, trading off bass and organ with natural bandleader Ed Guinn.""We weren't tripping, but the Elevators were. But they always were, what difference did That make? A typical deejay came up to Roky's microphone, in his makeup and maroon crisp-creased slacks and slicked-back pomaded pompadour and started blabbing, as the Elevators were plugging in their instruments, and Roky moved suddenly, shoved the deejay out of the way. They started playing in perfect synch.""The stage rotated one way, then it would lurch, and move back the other way. A little disorienting every now and then. The whole world was disorienting all the time in those days, what difference does a little lurch make when the walls are pulsating and the person next to your head has ballooned out bigger? or you're sitting on the front porch of your house and an orange tabby tom cat walks up to you and sits down, his head level with your groin and shoots a psychic blast of energy into your gonads? It's just an ordinary day, light your cigarette on a parking meter and walk on down the road. I remember clearly that I never got any money for that gig.""…My future old lady and mother of our son Asia, Linda Lorrita Miller, was also there that night. Neither one of those beautiful women thought the Elevators were stumbling. I thought they were great, as usual. Perfection was not the goal.""Joel" also remembers the gig, "My wife and I, who never used recreational drugs, were there that night, too. We also remember it differently. It was a spectacular show."

Christopher Bassist, Doug Walden, was there and remembers,"I saw the elevators 3 or 4 times, but they always had the same line up, except for the bull sessions. Taylor Hall, Vulcan Gas co. at some theater in the round (they seemed a little lost, with the stage rotating), and maybe??? Love Street?"

This gig represented a turning point for the band. After this performance, John Ike Walton and Ronnie Leatherman quit the band as he recently said in the 13th Floor Elevators Facebook Group,"Ronnie and I quit this band right after this freak out of Stacy's. Pitiful performance."

Danny Thomas and Dan Galindo were brought in as the new rhythm section and helped birth the 'Elevators' masterpiece - Easter Everywhere. However, this line-up also saw the swift downward spiral of Roky Erickson's mental health and eventual arrest and incarceration. Additionally, the 13th Floor Elevators never played outside of Texas after this gig. They were a "local" band afterwards; the first flush of psychedelic fame, that occurred after Monterey, had passed them by. Really, the career of the band now took on the look of a running gun battle with authorities with Erickson's mental health deteriorating rapidly.

The tapes of this gig were rejected by International Artists and languished for years until IA was bought out by Charly. The tapes were then licensed to whoever had some cash to pony up. Labels like Collectibles, known as "Contemptables to the fans, licensed the recording and put it out under a number of titles including: Magic Of The Pyramids. The source of the tapes was said to be sourced from "La Maison, Winter 1967".

One of the companies that licensed the tapes was a Japanese company that put out an LP. This is, by far, the best sounding version of this show to date. The sound is in crystal clear stereo. The Roky CD Club took this LP and put it out for the fans as: Reverberation in the Round.

Recently, Charly, cashing in on the 'Elevators as much as possible, along with the charlatan, known as Paul Drummond, put this show out from the "master tapes". Really? They took expansive stereo and crushed it to mono. They then "Charlyized" it by putting their fucked up compression onto it; the infamous Charly Effect overseen by Paul Drummond. What is interesting are the tracks from an after-show jam with the Conqueroo.

This concert WAS the 13th Floor Elevators' moment. IF they had risen to it, the latest technology was in place to capture the moment and produce an amazing live album. And live is where the 13th Floor Elevators were at. Then, maybe, John Ike and Ronnie wouldn't have quit. And, maybe, this amazing live record would have helped catapult the 13th Floor Elevators to national, and international, recognition.

Alas, it was not to be but maybe, on some parallel, Gurdjieffian universe, Tommy Hall tells the band that the gig is too important and maybe they should lay off of the LSD so as to get a good recording. However, in this universe, time space reality, that didn't happen.